


leave my body

by seventhstar



Series: A/O 'verse [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Body Modification, M/M, Past Lives, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3791341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alpha/omega verse. In the Poseidon Lands, omegas are freer than they are in Durbe's home kingdom. But omegas of royal blood are still sterilized.</p><p>Durbe and Nasch have mixed feelings about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave my body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rangerhitomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/gifts).



“I suppose it’s time.”

Nasch was sweating. It was almost midnight, and the cold sea breeze was coming in through the open temples doors, but sweat was dripping down his forehead. He was wearing the thin white temple garments, and without his armor he felt naked.

Durbe wasn’t in his armor, at least. He was wearing the same clothes as Nasch was, in deference to his station.

Nasch was violently glad, in that moment, that rank superseded sex. He might be an omega, but he was an omega prince. And an omega knight.

And after tonight, he would be nothing at all.

He could smell the sour coldweed. Someone had laid out a mortar and pestle, a jar of oil, a few sweeter-smelling herbs for Durbe in preparation. Nasch had tasted coldweed only once before, at the age of twelve, when he’d presented as omega. His father had wanted to be sure he could tolerate it. It was disgusting stuff.

Durbe was opening the door to the chamber. The idea of being in there all night, trapped in the stale air that would grow heavy with his scent, that would grow wamer as the night went on, made Nasch nauseous.

He nodded at Durbe as regally as he could. He would be a true prince, in the morning. He couldn’t let anyone — even Durbe — know that he was afraid.

It wasn’t as if he’d ever had a true heat. It wasn’t as if he was going to miss anything. He had no reason to be afraid. This was the least of things he was going to have to do, to suffer, for his kingdom.

Durbe held the door open for him while he entered. He looked good, Nasch thought fleetingly, the blood in his chest suddenly warm.

Oh. It was starting. He slammed the door closed behind him, suddenly aware of Durbe’s scent in the air, suddenly aware that the chamber would keep it away from him.

He folded himself against the wall. The moon was rising outside, and his mind was starting to feel fuzzy. It was like that, his mother had told him, the first time.

Well, this would be the only time. Assuming Durbe didn’t misprepare the coldweed potion and leave him an omega. But he wouldn’t do that.

Normally, the companion who waited with an omega who was being sterilized was another omega. It was too risky to leave an omega in heat with an alpha, alone, especially an omega of royal blood. Too risky, because an omega that had been…used…was worthless, and alphas couldn’t been trusted not to ruin the potion to prevent the sterilization.

Nasch had insisted, though. He didn’t want Merag to be frightened. And he trusted Durbe completely.

Sweat fell into his eyes. He closed them, and waited.

+++++

Durbe wondered if it was painful.

He crushed the coldweed to a fine powder. The sound of the pestle scraping the mortar hurt his ears. The priestess had given him a cup to hold the paste he would made with the powder; he was to fill the cup completely, she had warned him, and not a drop more.

“Remember that you are poisoning him,” she had said. “Do not make mistakes.”

Durbe remembered.

Things were different in his home kingdom. An omega of royal blood could never inherit the throne, or hold any position of power. Their heats, Durbe had been taught, made them too fragile.

About a quarter of the knights who served in the Poseidon Lands were omegas, and only half of those had undergone sterilization to halt their natural heat cycle. There were even more about the foot soldiers. Durbe had noted, after five years as a ward of the court, that sterilization was reserved for the rich, the nobility, the powerful.

Like Nasch.

He didn’t know how he felt about it, even now. It would have be derided as unnatural in his home, and Durbe sometimes still felt that way. But the omegas he had trained with, both male and female, would have beaten him bloody if he’d suggested they were incapable.

Durbe was not sure that they would be wrong, and he strove to be the kind of man that didn’t ignore what he saw for what he felt. Mostly, he’d remained silent on the issue of interactions between the sexes. He was an alpha, but his social status was so low that it usually didn’t matter.

Usually.

He still wasn’t sure why he was here.

The coldweed had been ground. He tipped oil into the bowl and mashed it into the powder with a flat spoon. The paste had to be thick, he had been warned. Durbe tested the consistency as he mixed it, pressing down with his fingertip to see if he could make an indent.

He missed his sword. He’d been knighted a week ago and he’d only taken it off since then to bathe and sleep. Nasch had teased him relentlessly; his knighthood would come next year and Durbe would mock him in turn then.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. If omegas and alphas were intrinsically difference, and the difference lay in their bodies, as Durbe had been taught, than a sterilized, heatless Nasch would be a different boy. The fourteen year old who emerged from the chamber in the morning might be totally unlike the one that had gone in silently, mouth pressed together so that he could hide the fact that he was afraid.

Foolishness, he thought. Coldweed has been used this way in this country for a thousand years. Nasch is safe.

It was stupid to feel so protective of a boy — Nasch would seethe, he already thought of himself as a man — who had an entire royal guard to protect him.

Maybe it was just loneliness. Nasch and Merag were all Durbe had. Their regard had kept him fed and clothed and sheltered all these years. They might say Durbe did not need to repay them, but Durbe still felt…

…if only Nasch would need him for something…

…it would be easier.

He spooned the paste into the cup and flattened it down. When it was full, he took a knife and smoothed the surface. Not one drop more, he thought.

There was a small door cut into the side of the chamber. Durbe knocked twice, so that Nasch would know not to open it from his end, and then opened it and slid the cup inside. He closed and locked the small door again.

He waited. There were two knocks, from the other side, and then silence.

+++++

It was too hot.

Nasch had stripped off his clothes, and now he was lying on the thin pallet in the center of the chamber, forcing himself to eat the sour coldweed potion, and trying not to throw it back up. It left behind an aftertaste, and he wouldn’t be allowed any water for hours yet, just in case in his heat-addled state he tried to dilute the potion.

Personally, Nasch thought that was ridiculous — going into heat couldn’t erase an omega’s ability to use their brain, he had soldiers who served during their heats without issue — and he suspected that the problem was that the priest in charge of the sterilization chamber in this temple was an alpha, and also stupid.

When this was over, he was going to ask for Durbe’s advice in getting him replaced. Durbe was good at politics.

Nasch nearly bit through his lip in frustration. He needed to not think about Durbe. Thinking about Durbe was…

…distracting.

He tried to ignore the discomfort. Durbe was his friend, thinking about him that way would be…well, they wouldn’t be able to be friends anymore.

Nasch had understood that instinctively from the moment he presented — that either he made sure no one ever thought he was weak, or he would be thought of a weakling for the rest of his life. Someday he would be king, after all.

So he didn’t think about Durbe much at all, even though Durbe alone seemed to understand what he meant sometimes, even when Durbe alone seemed to have any patience for him.

His sister was a priestess, and his best friend was a knight, and Nasch was…

He groaned. He was thinking too much. Was he always this irritating?

“Durbe?”

“Nasch?” There was a scuffling noise. “Are we allowed to speak?”

Nasch sighed. “I’m ordering you to talk to me.”

“Very well.”

He rolled over and sat against the chamber wall. His head thumped back against the stone. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. They wouldn’t let me bring a book.”

He laughed. “They’re worried you’ll drop it in the water.”

“I wouldn’t drop it!”

“What, did they cover that in your knight training?”

There was a silence.

“I’m afraid,” Durbe said.

“Why are you afraid?”

“I just poisoned you.”

“No one’s died from coldweed poisoning in fifty years.” Nasch tapped his stomach. It was starting to hurt, and the heat was starting to fade.

“I know.” There was a muffled thump. “But you were afraid, when you went in. I thought…”

“I wouldn’t have asked you to do it if I thought you would accidentally kill me.”

“Then what are you afraid of?”

“I’m not —” Nasch had to bite back a groan. There was a sudden, burning pain in his stomach.

The pain cleared his head. Durbe was here, and the coldweed was working, and when this was over, Nasch thought, he would know that he would be king.

He wondered how much of the fear was his, and how much of it was the effect of the heat beginning in his body. Now it was over, and he would never know. It was done. He wasn’t an omega anymore.

Tomorrow there would be a coronation. He and Durbe would both have new armor.

For the first time, Nasch looked forward to it.

“I’m not afraid,” he repeated. “I’m fine.”

+++++

The sunlight was burning Durbe’s eyes by the time the priestess returned to the temple to let Nasch out. She glanced at him, and she didn’t look pleased. Durbe would have been offended, but he was exhausted.

Nasch emerged with a hand over his eyes. The priestess steadied him from one side.

Durbe steadied him from the other. Nasch froze when Durbe put a hand on his back.

It was the first time he had ever touched him with someone else present, Durbe realized. He had always been so careful of propriety before. But Nasch didn’t protest as Durbe helped him out of the chamber, and into a side room, where there was a bed laid out and a tall cup of water sitting beside it.

Nasch downed it in one gulp. He made a face, and then slumped onto the bed.

“Are you alright?”

“Headache,” Nasch said.

He sounded exactly like himself. Terse and mildly irritated. He was going to call Durbe an idiot any minute now.

Durbe handed him the blanket that was lying folded at the foot of the bed.

“Go to sleep,” he said.

Nasch blinked at him. “I did it,” he told him.

“You did,” Durbe said. For the first time, he felt pride. Regardless of how he felt about sterilization, Nasch made the choice to undergo it for the sake of his kingdom.

Loyalty, at least, was something he understood. He sat down on the stool in the corner of the room while Nasch slept, and waited.

 


End file.
